William Merrill | Smithsonian Institution (original) (raw)

Papers by William Merrill

Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 2012

Anales Del Instituto De Investigaciones Esteticas, 2000

RESUMEN Se compararon los resultados de los análisis faunísticos realizados en tres sitios arqueo... more RESUMEN Se compararon los resultados de los análisis faunísticos realizados en tres sitios arqueológicos en el noroeste de Chihuahua, México —Cerro Juanaqueña, El Zurdo, and Paquimé— con el fin de explorar la diversidad de mamíferos presentes en el área y sus relaciones con los humanos a partir del establecimiento de asentamientos agrícolas (alrededor de 1300 a.C.). En los depósitos de estos sitios fueron encontrados casi todos los taxa previstos; sin embargo, debido a las diferencias en la metodología utilizada para recuperar y analizar los restos de fauna, resultó difícil determinar variaciones entre los sitios en cuanto a las interacciones hombre-mamífero. Los resultados sugieren que en los sitios analizados los mamíferos pequeños constituyeron pieza clave en la estrategia de supervivencia; la aparente importancia del búfalo (Bison bison) y el berrendo (Antilocapra americana ABSTRACT Faunal analyses from three archaeological sites in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico—Cerro Juanaqueñ...

Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, 1997

Histories of Maize, 2006

Understanding the spread of maize agriculture from Mesoamerica to northern Mexico and the America... more Understanding the spread of maize agriculture from Mesoamerica to northern Mexico and the American South- west is fundamental to addressing a series of theoretical issues related to the impetus and consequences of the adop- tion of farming in this region and around the world. Here, we review recent research on the earliest maize in the north- ern Mexican state of Chihuahua and assess its relevance to current issues including the timing, spread, adoption, and consequences of agriculture.

Anthropological Linguistics, 2012

The Uto-Aztecan language family figures prominently in research on early agriculture in western N... more The Uto-Aztecan language family figures prominently in research on early agriculture in western North America. A central issue is the role that the members of the Proto-Uto-Aztecan speech community might have played in the diffusion of maize agriculture from Mesoamerica to the southwestern United States. Key to addressing this issue is determining whether an agricultural lexicon can be reconstructed for Proto-Uto-Aztecan, but despite several comparative studies of the agricultural lexica of the Uto-Aztecan languages, consensus remains elusive. A detailed reanalysis of these lexica indicates that an agriculture-related vocabulary can be reconstructed only for Proto-Southern Uto-Aztecan, supporting the conclusion that maize agriculture entered the Uto-Aztecan world after the division of the Proto-Uto-Aztecan speech community into southern and northern branches. Additional lexical and biogeographical data suggest that the Proto-Southern Uto-Aztecan speech community was located near the modern Arizona-Sonora border when its members began cultivating maize, a development that may have occurred around four thousand years ago, when the earliest evidence of maize agriculture appears in the archaeological record of the North American Southwest.

Language Dynamics and Change, 2013

The internal structure of the Uto-Aztecan language family has been debated since the late 19th ce... more The internal structure of the Uto-Aztecan language family has been debated since the late 19th century, when the historical relationships among all of its major subdivisions were first recognized. Alexis Manaster Ramer’s identification in 1992 of a phonological innovation shared by languages belonging to the four northernmost subfamilies led to the acceptance of these languages as a genetic linguistic unit called Northern Uto-Aztecan, but no consensus has emerged regarding the organization into higher-level subgroups of the remaining five subfamilies. In this essay, I argue in support of a perspective, originally developed by Terrence Kaufman, that the languages in these subfamilies also constitute a genetic unit, Southern Uto-Aztecan, based on two shared, sequential innovations: *-n- > *-r- and *-ŋ- > *-n-. Key to my argument is the reconstruction of a Proto-Uto-Aztecan liquid phoneme with **[-r-] and **[-l-] as its allophones, which clarifies the diachronic relationships amo...

Reviews in Anthropology, 1983

... The Daykeeper is about the Ixil Maya of High-land Guatemala and especially about one Ixil man... more ... The Daykeeper is about the Ixil Maya of High-land Guatemala and especially about one Ixil man, named Shas Ko'w. Born in 1895 in Nebaj, one of three Ixil towns, Shas Ko'w endured in the eighty-one years of his life forced govern-ment labor, contract work on Pacific coast ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010

The hypothesis that Proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA) speakers cultivated maize in or near Mesoamerica rest... more The hypothesis that Proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA) speakers cultivated maize in or near Mesoamerica rests primarily on Jane H. Hill's argument (1) that a maize-related vocabulary can be reconstructed for PUA, based on cognates in Northern Uto-Aztecan (NUA) and Southern Uto-Aztecan (SUA) languages. In our essay (2), we noted that Hill fails to demonstrate the existence of this PUA vocabulary, because the NUA words she identifies as cognates of maize-related words in SUA languages lack the expected phonological forms or the expected meanings. The same characterization applies to the additional evidence from three California NUA languages that she cites in her reply. Despite Hill's claim, it is by no means certain that a PUA word for "maize" existed. Hill's proposed PUA **sunu can be reconstructed with a gloss of "maize" only for the SUA languages. The most likely NUA cognate, the Hopi word soŋowï, labels not maize but a wild grass, the giant sandreed. Whether the initial morpheme s xoŋin the Gabrielino word s xoŋ-áxe-y "tortilla" is cognate with SUA *sunu or Hopi soŋowï is uncertain, because the Gabrielino vowel o can reflect three different PUA vowels: **o, **u, and, most frequently, PUA **ï (3, 4). The Luiseño term s xa:xi-š "grain, wheat" deviates both phonologically and semantically from the expected. If **saki existed as a PUA word, the Luiseño reflex should be s xaki, not s xa:xi, because Luiseño-x-is a reflex of PUA **-k-when **-k-occurs before **a or **o, not before **i (5).

Museum Anthropology, 2004

Anthropology, History, and American Indians: Essays in Honor of William Curtis Sturtevant. WILLIA... more Anthropology, History, and American Indians: Essays in Honor of William Curtis Sturtevant. WILLIAM L.MERRILL and IVES GODDARDS, Editors Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. 2002. Pp. + 357.

Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 1996

The study of religion, like the study of culture in general, moves between the search for human u... more The study of religion, like the study of culture in general, moves between the search for human universals and the in-depth investigation of particular cases Shifting focus from the particular to the universal and back again is crucial to the advancement of understanding, but anthropologists have tended, at different points in the history of the discipline, to emphasize one perspec tive over the other, moving to the alternative perspective primarily because of dissatisfaction with the results of the one currently in vogue In the mid twentieth-century, the great expectations that many anthropologists had for broad cross-cultural analyses gave way to widespread disenchantment with this approach's methods and conclusions (Burton - White 1987) Anthro pological research became increasingly particularistic, with the solipsism of radical post-modernist ethnography emerging as the most extreme manifes

Economic Botany, 1975

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact

The Catholic Historical Review, 2011

the 1960s and 1970s. But it would be unfortunate for anyone to embrace his thesis without studyin... more the 1960s and 1970s. But it would be unfortunate for anyone to embrace his thesis without studying the rather different theological conclusions that came from the pen of Newman, following his study of historical change. The book under consideration leaves little substance to consider and no tools for discerning that which is faithful to Catholic tradition and that which is not. Newman’s labors, on the other hand, effectively distilled the difference between authentic change, which is desirable growth and necessary development, and that which constitutes deformity and infidelity.

American Ethnologist, 1997

American Anthropologist, 1993

We are puzzled by Bentley and Netting's comments on our article. They accuse us of having mi... more We are puzzled by Bentley and Netting's comments on our article. They accuse us of having misunderstood their work; they clearly have misunderstobd ours. Our goal was to describe the residential patterns of a contemporary community of mobile agriculturalists and to suggest why the majority of the members of this community move their entire households to different residences during the growing season or winter months. We examined this residential strategy within the context of several recent studies (cited in our article) that ...

American Anthropologist, 1986

American Anthropologist, 1992

Pre-Hispanic contacts and cultural continuity between the southwestern United States and northwes... more Pre-Hispanic contacts and cultural continuity between the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico have commanded the interest of archaeologists since the earliest work in the region. Many of the founders and early practitioners of archaeological research in the Southwest, such as AV Kidder, Emil Haury, and Earl H. Morris, also spent time working in Mesoamerica. It was natural that they considered cultural continuity to extend over the international border into Mexico. Between the two world wars, EB Sayles (1936), Walter W ...

Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 2012

Anales Del Instituto De Investigaciones Esteticas, 2000

Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, 1997

Histories of Maize, 2006

Anthropological Linguistics, 2012

Language Dynamics and Change, 2013

Reviews in Anthropology, 1983

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010

Museum Anthropology, 2004

Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 1996

Economic Botany, 1975

The Catholic Historical Review, 2011

American Ethnologist, 1997

American Anthropologist, 1993

American Anthropologist, 1986

American Anthropologist, 1992

As a period piece, Massa's book might well be instructive for students of the 1960s and 1970s. Bu... more As a period piece, Massa's book might well be instructive for students of the 1960s and 1970s. But it would be unfortunate for anyone to embrace his thesis without studying the rather different theological conclusions that came from the pen of Newman, following his study of historical change. The book under consideration leaves little substance to consider and no tools for discerning that which is faithful to Catholic tradition and that which is not. Newman's labors, on the other hand, effectively distilled the difference between authentic change, which is desirable growth and necessary development, and that which constitutes deformity and infidelity.